If you plan on buying or selling a business, remember that a strong social network and online presence is an important aspect of a company’s goodwill, and, ultimately, increases the brand and business value. As digital transformation is accelerating throughout all areas of business and changing the way consumers and businesses interact, social media is no longer optional for organizations in 2021. Social media not only acts to attract new customers but to also stay connected to an established customer base, maintaining customer loyalty. If your business is not on social media, you could be missing out on incredibly valuable benefits, such as new customers, insights into your online presence and brand, and audience and engagement opportunities with potential and established customers. In addition, social media is one of the most cost-effective methods of marketing while reaching a broader audience than traditional forms of marketing.
Commit to Learn
Digital transformation is accelerating throughout the business world, and as a result, social media’s presence in all industries is increasing as well. Social media websites evolve rapidly and, as such, businesses must stay in tune with changing trends and adapt to the new business environment too. In the early stages of your company’s ascent into the online world, take advantage of the enormous amount of resources provided by the specific websites that you choose to incorporate into your marketing plan.
Social media marketing may be daunting to new users with the different types of platforms and methods of marketing, but you do not need to search far and wide; as a first step, these platforms provide abundant amounts of information to help with new users and are a great resource for new social media marketing users.
As an example, LinkedIn has created video crash courses to help new users, individuals and businesses alike, take advantage of the opportunities the professional networking site creates. Follow this link to begin Learning and, while you are there, don’t forget to follow Beacon Corporation, Brokerage!
Choosing a Social Media Platform
Before initiating social media marketing, you must consider what social media platform is best suited for your specific business and its targeted audience. Not every social media platform will be a good fit for your business’s target audience and your business objectives; time should be invested into this initial step to identify which platform will provide your business with the greatest and most effective exposure, where the chosen platforms would be the ones most likely to reach and engage with your targeted demographic. The chosen platforms must also effectively align with your business goals and objectives.
For example, if your business sells jewelry for young adults and millennials, an appropriate social media platform would be Instagram and TikTok, which has a largely younger demographic user base. If your business is a consulting service provider of leadership training for corporations, LinkedIn would be an appropriate social media platform to advertise your business as the platform is highly trafficked by corporate professionals and their human resources team.
Social media platforms such as Instagram are heavy on visual content; contrastingly, Twitter is mainly text-based. To meet in the middle between these two social media platforms, Facebook is an effective combination of both text and visual content. Deciding on what type of content your business will be publishing will also aid in the process of choosing the most effective social media platform for your business.
Be Active
It is not enough to join the online networks; you must be active on many fronts. Once you have initiated your business’s social media presence, it is crucial to maintain it and grow it in order to reap all of the social media’s benefits.
On these social media platforms, reputation is key. Social media provides the perfect opportunity to reach a broad market; therefore, with access to a larger audience, it is even more crucial to have strong reputation management on these platforms. Lack of engagement, slow response times, and even small details, such as wrong spelling, all play a part in a business’s social media reputation. In addition to maintaining engagement on these platforms, engagement must work in favor of the business and be positive; this means consistently posting, responding to customers as quickly as possible, and paying close attention and reviewing posts before publishing.
There are many decisions to make on how your company will operate online and with what goals and objectives in mind. For example, is your business’ focus on strengthening customer relationships? Is it to increase the number of visits and traction to your website? Once you have a clear objective, decide on a concise plan of action, and begin creating your company’s online presence. It is equally important to be actively tracking results and responsively adjusting your marketing plan to maximize efficiency.
The Internet can be overwhelming for some businesses but with a commitment to learning and active participation, it can reap great rewards.
Be Consistent
Consistency is king. One of the main points from above was that consistent engagement on social media platforms is crucial. Be patient with your efforts and allow your company enough time to achieve results. It takes time for businesses to build a strong social media presence. Quality posts, consistent engagement, and responsiveness to online users all play a part in building a strong presence; in combination, these tools not only attract potential customers to your business’s social media but also maintain their attention. Once individuals react positively to your business’s social media content, they will follow or ‘Like’ your accounts, enabling them to see future posts that your business publishes.
Followers are kept up to date on all of your business’ posts, which enables your business to convert these engagements into visits onto your company website, and resultantly, purchases of the goods and services that your business offers. A strong following count also acts to attract other potential customers as well; a high following count communicates to users that there is a public consensus on the validity of your business, and in relation, the quality of the goods and services that you provide.
In addition to consistency of posting, it is important to monitor the amount that your business posts. Follow a consistent posting pattern and schedule; although you do not want to be posting too little, you also want to avoid posting too much. Test out different posting methods, such as prioritizing quality of posts or quantity of posts, to see which methods are most effective with your target audience.
All too often, businesses abandon their online marketing plan because of perceived ineffectiveness. Patience and consistency with social media marketing are key. Should you reach this bump in the road, stay on course. You will find your audience in the long run and it will be worth it.
Analyzing Competitors
Although the main focus of social media marketing is to engage with consumers, attracting potential customers, and maintaining established ones, social media can also be used as a tool to analyze and understand what the competitors of your business are doing. Pay attention to what competitors post and their marketing methods and take note of what works well for them and what does not. Doing this will remove an additional testing step for your own business’ social media when deciding what type of posts to pursue. Combine these insights into your social media marketing strategy.
Increase Business Value
Commit to ongoing learning. Be active and consistent. If you are currently in the market to Buy a Business, being savvy with social media can anchor your new company by maintaining strong customer relationships during the early transition period. Social media marketing requires both strategy and creativity; take the time to test out which marketing methods work best for the type of business you are buying into to develop the most effective marketing plan for your specific business. Once you learn and understand the many aspects of social media marketing, you will see that its benefits extend far beyond just increasing sales and your bottom line. Social media marketing works to build your business in the long-term as well by maintaining customer loyalty and building your business’s reputation, a highly-valued intangible asset that will play a part in a higher business valuation.
When the time comes to Sell your Business, having a successful online marketing program will demonstrate to potential buyers the strength of your company’s brand. An engaged user presence on social media platforms translates into a larger potential customer base; this will act as an advantage for when potential buyers are searching for an established business. In addition, for a business owner, the efforts of maintaining an online presence will make your business more valuable and you will be rewarded with a higher business valuation and increased enterprise value.